Hi Shamus, just wanted to say that I’ve been following DM of the Rings almost from the beginning and I love it. I’ve never played any sort of D&D or RPG, but many of my friends have and even I can appreciate it.

[Shamus] I love the sense of menace on panel 3. I realise you meant it as a total failure on the part of the King Af All Bones to make his diplomacy or bargain checks, but I read it in a more…Call of Cthulhu framework.

Loving the strips, as always. The plethora of people attempting to comment with nothing more substantial than “first” irritates me, though… to the extent where I’ve stopped looking at the comments anymore.

A rule I made a while back: If you’re going to FIRST POST, you have to have something useful to say besides FIRST POST. This is to fix the problem where the first five comments were all people trying to claim FP and nothing else.

Gimli’s a dwarf, yes, yes, I know, but he still looks unusually small in panel 2 compared to the gigantic ghost just behind him and to the viewer’s right. Is that an artifact of stitching together shots or is that a flaw in the moviemaker’s magic?

Shamus: Just because you asked for it, I got only half the page when I first loaded. Yes, the first two panels, then a lot of whitespace, and your comment at the end of it. But it looks like the connection’s a bit funky on my end, and reloading the page did the trick, so never mind. :-P

Haha! Brilliant. I also loved the shot of Gimli and Leggylass growling like leashed dogs. Grrr.

In the second panel, Gimli does look even shorter than usual. I think its just the way the frame was stitched together, with Leggo in the foreground, Aragorm in the middle ground and Gimli way in the back background.

And I was so expecting the Green Ghost King to go: “The elf wants to kill us *again*? We’re already dead! Bwahaha!”

(Insert creepy screencap of the GGK dislocating his jaw and laughing maniacally (sp?). That one always gave me the shivers, hehe.)

Nah. This version is a lot funnier. And the very very last screencap of Aragorm going: “Shake on it” made me giggle. :D

P.S. I heard rumor of the DM slipping a Python quote in there somewhere? It must have been hiding behind the tree, cause I didn’t spot it. =\

Gimli's a dwarf, yes, yes, I know, but he still looks unusually small in panel 2 compared to the gigantic ghost just behind him and to the viewer's right. Is that an artifact of stitching together shots or is that a flaw in the moviemaker's magic?

I interpretted that ghost as being in front of him, just that we can see Gimli through the ghost.

I’d just like to say that I really like how you’ve “hidden” the comics. I like to save up reading them for the end of the week, but I also like to check the site for other updates. Now that they are not fully posted on the main page, I can scroll through today’s/yesterday’s posts without worrying about my attention prematurely wandering towards DMotR.

you’re awesome and I love your sense of humor. I’m also very greatful you’ve removed the first posters. It’s a stupid thing to take pride in. The comments should be all about YOU and your brilliance and humor and just plain wonderfulness!

Just when I thought this couldn’t really get any funnier, you’ve gone and proven me wrong. The MP reference is awesome!! The last panel has got to be the best though. I snarfed water on my screen when I read it >.

I wonder how that stuff thing is going to work. Aragorn’s
character surrounded by rusted ruined old weapons and armour or Aragorn surrounded by disappearing Ghost who have no stuff and nothing except fear to give.

LOL! Loved the strip – and if you -do- give them the ghost’s ‘stuff’ then there will actually be a reason for the scene with all those skulls from the ‘extended version’ [well, a better reason than P.Jackson had, IMO]

The PCs are lacking in Charisma because they’re usually not bards or sorcerers. And no saves depend on charisma so it’s usually a pretty safe dump stat. So when they go around the place behaving like magpie-gorilla hybrids, it’s ROLEPLAYING.

“The PCs are lacking in Charisma because they're usually not bards or sorcerers. And no saves depend on charisma so it's usually a pretty safe dump stat. So when they go around the place behaving like magpie-gorilla hybrids, it's ROLEPLAYING.”

And the sad thing is, Charisma is more valuable in 3.0 and 3.5 than it used to be. Paladins used to have to have a 17 or better in Charisma, which had virtually no in-game benefits, unless your DM was a knob and actually used the NPC Reaction Roll charts.

i just stumbled on to this from a posting on techreport.com about online comics. http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/12632
great work keep it up.
i was disapointed after hour of reading there was no more next button on this comic. i eagerly await more.

About Charisma being a dump stat: I dunno… just about every character I have played needed high Charisma for skills like Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, etc., not to mention magic in some cases. I admit I do find it frustrating when my low-Cha fellow party members mess up a negotiation where I could have succeeded.

It wasn’t until Gimli’s “horse f***ers” DMotR episode a while back that I was inspired to say deliberately stupid things when *I* rolled a 1 on a Diplomacy check. Thanks Shamus. -A

Shamus, do you mind if I compose for my personal use comic album from your work?

Actually, I would prefer buying that as ready made album once the serie is completed, but I guess that you are that much at the edge of violation of copyrights that any book print company wouldn’t take the risk and you making money out of it might be the drop causing copyright holders to interfare.

In the old Unearthed Arcana rules, when they introduced the Illusionist class, they made Charisma their primary attribute. For example, bonus spells were based on charisma. The only character I had with a decent charisma was my Illusionist, who eventually became my most powerful character. Now I have to convert him into a 3.5 character if I want to keep playing him, and that creates a dilemma. Do I keep his stats the same, and make him a sorcerer so that he maintains his spell-casting benefits, or do I switch his scores so that his intelligence is replaced by his charisma since “illusionist” is now a wizard sub-class and depends on intelligence as their primary attribute?

“Oh, I kinda' miss the FIRST posters. It was sort of a traditon [sic], and they were enthusiastic. How about we keep the first “˜first' poster & throw away the ersatz first posters?”
Meh, they deserve nothing. If they truly belonged, they’d be fighting for the 20th post so they’d have a nat 20.